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HEART SUTRA INTENSIVE
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four
ShantiMayi presents another section of the Heart Sutra intensive.
Since last month she has begun to add more commentary to the Intensive. She feels that the commentary offers the possibility for a more comprehensive understanding for the student. "The Heart of Wisdom Sutra" is so profound and so concise that it requires a subtle conceptual surrender and of course a more obvious conceptual surrender as well. Yet, though concepts cannot grasp emptiness, still it is very important to sink into the exceptional insight that this sutra and ShantiMayi's commentary provides. "One can only come to realize this sutra from the Heart of Wisdom within oneself."
Day two
Part 2
Here ShantiMayi
speaks about the Intensive
and its natural and un-contrived intention.
SM.: One student said: "You know, listening to the intensive, I feel like I don't know so much.
I tried to grab it and catch it for myself. I tried to understand it and hold it or work with it. The moment I stopped it, I began to see that it is working with me." You never have to analyze what is being said here in the Intensive. You need not pull it in or tug on it at all. You never have to consider: "Do I understand it, or don't I understand it?" because the message of the Heart Sutra is realized deeply through transmission. Everything that you need to know will always be there for you. Spiritually speaking, you do of course have something to do with all of this, somewhat anyhow. You must only understand well enough that you don't sabotage yourself and that you don't work against yourself -against your own heart. That is all, not much, but still this is of great importance. More often than not, it is simply a matter of listening well. In the same way that you would listen to the wind clicking the tall bamboos together, in a bamboo forest. Listening like that. Never do you need to do anything except surrender to the clicking song in the forest. This is also true here, in the Heart Sutra Intensive.
There is a transmission that takes place, and within yourself, you find that you understand all of it, every word of it. Your understanding moves much deeper than the words can go, with greater subtlety than the words can possibly reach. It is so that in an Intensive, the satsangh of the Intensive can bear fruit throughout your whole life.
You must never come to an Intensive with ShantiMayi and expect that you will enter in one way, and exit as someone different. You are going to arrive in one way and leave the same way, because we are considering the unchanging, not that which is 'progressing'. We are considering the total, the luminous, radiant. That which shines in darkness as well as in light.
Don't ever give very much importance to the feeling of: "Oh, I didn't understand the Intensive, it is too much for me!" Being that you are here, you will get exactly what you require and a good deal more as well. Don't struggle with it, let the clicking bamboo simply fall into your ears. Let your inspiration pour out into the sangha. Let your questions come up naturally, without self-consciousness. If you have a doubt let's remove it. If you have an insight let's hear it.
SM.: Let us move into the heart of the intensive now.
1 HEART OF PERFECT WISDOM SUTRA
2 Om, homage to the blissful Holy Perfect Wisdom!
3 Avalokiteshvara, Holy Bodhisattva, moving in deep wisdom
4 Saw below the five heaps: these he saw in essence empty
5 Here O Shariputra form is emptiness, the very emptiness is form
6 Not separate from form is emptiness, not separate from emptiness is form
7 What is form that is emptiness; what is emptiness is form
8 Like this are feelings, thoughts, impressions, understandings
This is the very point we have made already this morning.
9 Here O Shariputra all phenomena are marked with emptiness and
10 Not created, not destroyed, not impure, not pure, not deficient, not complete
11 O Shariputra therefore in the emptiness is no form
12 And no feeling, thought, impression, understanding
13 And no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind
14 No form, sound, smell, taste, touch or thought
15 No element of eyes and so forth to no-mind conscious element
16 No ignorance, no end of ignorance, and so forth to
17 No old age and no death, no end of old age or of death
So profound! There is no death, no end of death. How this is worded, my God.
A spiritual genius, ever so simple. Reaching so deep inside you. Drawing out such wisdom words from 'Here' O Shariputra, delivering into your ears and planting seeds of insight in your heart. Unbelievable. Unbelievable what this sutra says.
17 No old age and no death, no end of old age or of death
18 No sorrow, cause or end, no path; no knowing, no attachment and nonattachment
19 Thus O Shariputra, with this nonattainment does Bodhisattva
20 On the Perfect Wisdom place reliance, thus removing thought obstruction,
21 With no thought obstruction is no fear beyond all error,
22 He is certain of Nirvana
23 Buddhas of the three times all
24 Awaken to the highest, perfect and complete enlightenment relying on the Perfect Wisdom.
25 Therefore we should know the Perfect Wisdom, the great mantra
26 Great bright magic mantra, highest mantra and unequalled mantra
27 Cure of every sorrow, true because not false.
28 In Perfect Wisdom is the mantra spoken:
29 GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA
SM: Remember that Avalokiteshvara is not speaking from the level of duality whatsoever.
Avaloketishvara is not speaking to Shariputra from any dual sense but from 'Here'. Be sure of it.
Let's go back to sentence eight:
8 Like this are feelings, thoughts, impressions, understandings
SM: So what is the great sutra saying, what is the heart of wisdom saying 'here' ?
Does it say that we must not have thoughts, feelings, impressions and understandings? No. That is not implied.
From the point of reality, from the point of seeing things as they are, it would be very difficult to understand anything. Because of the non-dual quality of emptiness, knowledge is silenced altogether. It doesn't mean that knowledge is not good, it means that essentially there is one and one alone and there within you, knowledge is silenced. Silence knows all, in silence. You know through being. 'Knowing' is a very coarse and rough old word. Thoughts: empty. Impressions: empty. Understanding: empty. It really means that everything is pure and undefiled, essentially. This has always been so, always shall be so, always, always; from beginning-less time, until this moment, which is one and the same.
Then the sutra says:
Not created, not destroyed, not impure, not pure, not deficient, not complete.
Why does it say this? Why has the great Bodhisattva said such a thing?
Student: All of these things are limited.
SM: Exactly, all of these things are limited. Creation, though eternal and infinite, is limited.
Student: What is limited comes and goes.
SM: And too, what apparently comes and goes is limited. Limited means unreal and change means unreal. Unreal means without a fixed abode, unfounded and unstable, also it means in flux. All changes are realized as emptiness, at any given moment in any given location. But you have to really look ever so closely this movement of coming and going.
We speak of it, we contemplate it, and we consider it again and again and again.
Then why do you get caught by your thoughts and impressions? Why to get caught up in any situation that you think is created and you think is destroyed? Why do these passing images grab you time and time again?
SM: But if you really begin to tacitly understand beyond your understanding, (we have to use words of this nature), when you begin to realize your True Nature, like a laser that cuts through, also your understanding cuts through the skhandas. You can be on a spiritual journey for ever so long, and not realize that the very basis of experience is consciousness. When you realize, and truly realize, it is called God, it is called consciousness, it is called unconditional love. When you really begin to see that 'that' is the substratum of everything, regardless of our ideas, then impressions begin to empty, the skhandas become transparent. This is called radiance. Remember that the experience may remain the same, but there is a radiant transparent way of understanding everything.
It is revealed that the skhandas though vital and experienced, are empty. Then and thereafter, you are free of them and free in them. You are free of your thought impressions; you are free of emotional bindings.
© (1999-2007)